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Get Organized: 15 Social Media Tips for SMBs

You and your small or micro business need to have a
social media presence. That we know. If your potential clients,
customers, and audience live on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube,
and so on, then it's only reasonable that you go to those places to
reach them. They ain't coming to you.
Rarely do small businesses have the resources to hire a social media
manager, meaning the fate of your online social presence likely rests on
your shoulders. Even if you have an employee or intern whom you can
charge with spinning a social Web, that person still needs input from
you.
These 15 social media tips are designed to help you set up and manage a
social media presence for a small business or brand. Self-employed
people, including freelancers, should consider themselves or their name
the brand they're promoting.
1. Write Down the Results You Want
I see so many businesses (not just small ones, either) set up
social-media profiles without having any clue what they want to happen.
Ask the person in charge, and the answer will be something terrifyingly
vague, like "to engage with our audience," which doesn't mean
diddly-squat.
Do you want to provide answers and assistance to your customers or
readership? Do you want them to visit your website? Do you want them to
buy something? Do you want to build a relationship so that the customers
are now thinking more about your brand or business and are developing a
positive image that they will later share with their friends? What do
you want to happen?
If you don't know what results you want, using social media will be a
huge waste of your time and resources. Define what you want to happen
as a result of being on social networking sites, and write it down.
Writing forces you to think through your ideas clearly and fully.
Writing is a heightened form of thinking (that's why writers are so
smart). Whatever you write down in this exercise, that should be your
social media mission statement.
2. Decide Where to Be
Just because you read about Pinterest or Instagram attracting millions
of users doesn't mean your business will benefit from being on those
sites. Decide where to spend your social time based on the desired
results and likelihood of payoff.
One of the best ways to help you decide is to find out if people are
already talking about your business or brand on various sites. The next
three tips are site-specific tricks for doing so:

3. Find Out if Your Business is Already on Facebook
On Facebook, use the search bar to look for your business or brand. It's
entirely possible it already has a Place presence, in which case you'll
want to claim it. You can also see how many people "like" your business and are talking about it.
4. Find Mentions of Your Business on Twitter
On Twitter key your domain name into the search bar (assuming you have
an active website, of course). A Twitter search for a domain, like
"pcmag.com" will turn up instances tweets that site it, even if the URL
has been shortened using a URL shortening service, such as bit.ly, for
example.

5. Find Out if Pinterest Users are Pinning Your Content
Want to know if content from your business is already on Pinterest? A
good trick to know is to type the following into your address bar:
http://pinterst.com/source/domain/ replacing "domain" with your
business' homepage URL, for example with "geek.com" as shown in the
image.